Katherine Campbell (accused witch)

Last updated
Katherine Campbell
Died10 June 1697
Gallow Green, Paisley
Cause of deathExecution
OccupationServant
Known forAccused witch during Paisley Witch trials

Katherine Campbell (Katie Campbell, Catherine Campbell) (born circa 1677; died 10 June 1697) was a maidservant accused of theft and witchcraft during the last major witch hunt in Scotland, the Paisley witch trials. [1]

Contents

Biography

Campbell is described as " a young, well-favoured lass, twenty years of age". [2] She was an economic migrant who had travelled from the Highlands of Scotland to obtain work in Paisley, Renfrewshire. [3]

In August 1696, Christian Shaw, the ten or eleven-year-old daughter of the wealthy laird of Bargarran near Erskine, [4] accused Campbell, a maidservant in the Bargarran household, of theft [1] when she supposedly saw Campbell sneaking a drink of milk in the kitchen. [5] Shaw reported the theft to her mother who reprimanded Campbell. [6]

Later, after Campbell had scolded the child for telling tales on her and angrily shouted curses at her ( "The Devil harl (drag) your soul through hell!"), [5] Shaw claimed that Campbell had bewitched her and caused her to fall ill. [7] [4]

This illness of Shaw took the form of violent fits, struggling against invisible attackers. Shaw would cry out in these fits again and again that Campbell and Agnes Naismith, a poor elderly widow, were cutting her body with knives, despite neither woman being in the vicinity. [5] Christian placed the blame for her illness on a coven of witches in town, a coven led by her servant Katherine Campbell. [8]

By January 1697, her father John Shaw, had heard enough and requested a special commission be set up to investigate the case [5] 35 were accused of witchcraft [8] - both men and women - resulting in the last major witch hunt in Scotland, the Paisley witch trials. [4] Campbell was already remanded in custody, having tried to flee as soon as she had heard she was to be accused of witchcraft. [5]

On 18 February 1697 the Commission delivered their report to the Privy Council in Edinburgh citing clear evidence of witchcraft. Twenty-two were determined to be suspects for speedy trial. [5]

The trial opened in Paisley on the 13th April 1697 [6] but no fair hearing was ever likely. The jury were told that if they acquitted the accused then they too would be deemed "accessory [9] to all the blasphemies, apostasies, murders, tortures, and seductions, whereof these enemies of heaven and earth should be guilty." [10]

Seven were tried and seven found guilty. [4] These included Katherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith, Margaret Lang, Margaret Fulton, John Reid, John Lindsay, and James Lindsay.  The Lindsay brothers were only eleven and fourteen years old. [8]

Supernatural evidence was used against Campbell in that Shaw had been throwing up hairballs and this stopped as soon as a ball of hair of several colours [11] found in Katherine Campbell's pocket upon her arrest, was burnt. The link between Shaw's affliction and Campbell's possessing of the hairball, with its likeness in colour to Shaw's own hair, was established and given credulity by witness testimony. [1] Campbell denied all knowledge of it, but the presence of the hairball was deemed enough to be proof of Campbell's guilt. [6]

Death

While one of the accused, John Reid, killed himself in prison, [8] the other six were executed by hanging before being burnt at the stake in front of a massive crowd at Gallow Green at the West End of Paisley. [4]

The accused were each allowed to speak from the scaffold before they were executed in turn. The two young Lindsay brothers were reportedly garrotted together as they held onto each other’s hands [8] but...

"Katherine Campbell, the Shaw's maid who had unwittingly perhaps started the whole affair, made the crowd gasp in mixed horror and admiration. Refusing to go quietly, she was dragged screaming and struggling to the scaffold, where she shrieked down the vengeance of both God and the Devil upon her persecutors before being flung into oblivion." [5]

One gruesome account states some of the accused were not dead when they were set on fire [9] and that the executioner had to borrow a walking stick to push the victims back into the fire when they tried to crawl their way out. [8]

Campbell's burnt remains were buried with the other accused at Maxwellton Cross, where the intersection of Maxwellton Street and George Street are today. This mass grave, marking the last of the major witch hunts in Europe, was adorned by a horseshoe and a circle of cobblestones. [4] The horseshoe, according to Paisley folklore, was thought to bring prosperity to Paisley as long as it remained there. This was until the horseshoe was lost in the 1970s and the town's fortunes entered a period of decline. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isobel Gowdie</span> Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn near Nairn during 1662

Isobel Gowdie was a Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn near Nairn during 1662. Scant information is available about her age or life and, although she was probably executed in line with the usual practice, it is uncertain whether this was the case or if she was allowed to return to the obscurity of her former life as a cottar’s wife. Her detailed testimony, apparently achieved without the use of violent torture, provides one of the most comprehensive insights into European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Berwick witch trials</span> Scottish witch trials in 1590

The North Berwick witch trials were the trials in 1590 of a number of people from East Lothian, Scotland, accused of witchcraft in the St Andrew's Auld Kirk in North Berwick on Halloween night. They ran for two years, and implicated over 70 people. These included Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, on charges of high treason.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paisley witches</span> 1697 witch trial

The Paisley witches, also known as the Bargarran witches or the Renfrewshire witches, were tried in Paisley, Renfrewshire, central Scotland, in 1697. Eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, complained of being tormented by some local witches; they included one of her family's servants, Katherine Campbell, whom she had reported to her mother after witnessing her steal a drink of milk.

The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 was a series of nationwide witch trials that took place in the whole of Scotland from March to October 1597. At least 400 people were put on trial for witchcraft and various forms of diabolism during the witch hunt. The exact number of those executed is unknown, but is believed to be about 200. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 was the second of five nationwide witch hunts in Scottish history, the others being The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1590–91, The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1628–1631, The Great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50 and The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch trials in early modern Scotland</span>

In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the late middle age there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50</span>

The great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50 was a series of witch trials in Scotland. It is one of five major hunts identified in early modern Scotland and it probably saw the most executions in a single year.

Christian Shaw was a Scottish industrialist regarded as the founder of the thread industry in Renfrewshire. As a child, she was instrumental in the Bargarran witch trials of 1697.

Geillis Duncan also spelled Gillis Duncan was a young maidservant in 16th century Scotland who was accused of being a witch. She was also the first recorded British named player of the mouth harp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witchcraft in Orkney</span> Overview of witch persecution in Orkney, Scotland

Witchcraft in Orkney possibly has its roots in the settlement of Norsemen on the archipelago from the eighth century onwards. Until the early modern period magical powers were accepted as part of the general lifestyle, but witch-hunts began on the mainland of Scotland in about 1550, and the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 made witchcraft or consultation with witches a crime punishable by death. One of the first Orcadians tried and executed for witchcraft was Allison Balfour, in 1594. Balfour, her elderly husband and two young children, were subjected to severe torture for two days to elicit a confession from her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pittenweem witches</span>

The Pittenweem witches were five Scottish women accused of witchcraft in the small fishing village of Pittenweem in Fife on the east coast of Scotland in 1704. Another two women and a man were named as accomplices. Accusations made by a teenage boy, Patrick Morton, against a local woman, Beatrix Layng, led to the death in prison of Thomas Brown, and, in January 1705, the murder of Janet Cornfoot by a lynch mob in the village.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Aitken (witch)</span>

Margaret Aitken, known as the Great Witch of Balwearie, was an important figure in the great Scottish witchcraft panic of 1597 as her actions effectively led to an end of that series of witch trials. After being accused of witchcraft Aitken confessed but then identified hundreds of women as other witches to save her own life. She was exposed as a fraud a few months later and was burnt at the stake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bute witches</span>

The Bute witches were six Scottish women accused of witchcraft and interrogated in the parish of Rothesay on Bute during the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62. The Privy Council granted a Commission of Justiciary for a local trial to be held and four of the women – believed by historians to be Margaret McLevin, Margaret McWilliam, Janet Morrison and Isobell McNicoll – were executed in 1662; a fifth may have died while incarcerated. One woman, Jonet NcNicoll, escaped from prison before she could be executed but when she returned to the island in 1673 the sentence was implemented.

Marie Lamont, also referred to as Mary Lawmont (1646–1662), was executed for witchcraft during the reign of Charles II just after Witchmania had peaked in the United Kingdom. Her youth at the time of her execution made her case unusual.

The witch trials in Connecticut, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. They were the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the Salem Witch Trials by nearly thirty years. John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. The execution of Alse Young of Windsor in the spring of 1647 was the beginning of the witch panic in the area, which would not come to an end until 1670 with the release of Katherine Harrison.

Euphame MacCalzean was a victim of the North Berwick witch trials of 1590–1591.

Margaret Burges, also known as 'Lady Dalyell', was a Scottish businesswoman from Nether Cramond who was found guilty of witchcraft and executed in Edinburgh in 1629.

Catherine Murray was a Scottish aristocrat and courtier.

Violet Mar was a Scottish woman accused of plotting the death of Regent Morton by witchcraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Duchill</span> Scottish woman executed for witchcraft in 1658

Margaret Duchill was a Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Alloa during the year 1658. She was implicated by others and she named other women. She was executed on 1 June 1658.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katarina witch trials</span>

The Katarina witch trials took place in the Katarina Parish in the capital of Stockholm in Sweden in 1676. It was a part of the big witch hunt known as the Great noise, which took place in Sweden between the years 1668 and 1676, and it also illustrated the end of it.

References

  1. 1 2 3 The Scottish Witch-hunt in Context. Julian Goodare. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. 2002. pp. 149, 160. ISBN   0-7190-6023-0. OCLC   49551469.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ↑ Brown, Robert (1886). The History of Paisley, from the Roman Period Down to 1884. J. & J. Cook. p. 358.
  3. ↑ "Paisley's Enchanted Threads | The Story | The People | The Victims | Katherine Campbell | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697". www.paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 McGuire, Brian (2011-08-13). "The Witches". Paisley Scotland. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "The Renfrewshire Witches - newoomh". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  6. 1 2 3 "The Renfrewshire Witches – Turn Left At The Bridge" . Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  7. ↑ Goodare, Julian; Yeoman, Louise; Martin, Lauren; Miller, Joyce (2010). "Survey Database, Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, Scottish History, School of History and Classics, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland". witches.shca.ed.ac.uk. doi:10.7488/ds/100 . Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ER (2016-10-24). "The Paisley Witch Trials". Naked History. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  9. 1 2 Pickering, David (2014-01-19). Dictionary of Witchcraft. David Pickering.
  10. ↑ Robbins, Rossell Hope (2022-03-29). The Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC.
  11. ↑ Renfrew county (1877). A History of the Witches of Renfrewshire, who were burned on the gallowgreen of Paisley. Publ. by the ed. of the Paisley repository [J. Millar]. [With] Appendix, by D. Semple. p. 83.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.